Friday, September 21, 2007

We Need Help!

NurinJazlin, 8, went missing on Aug 20 after going to her neighbourhood pasarmalam.

On Monday, 17Th September 2007, the body of a girl around Nurin's age was found stuffed in a gym bag at a shop house in PetalingJaya. Police believed that its the body of missing girl, Nurin.

Read NST today (20/9/2007) from pages 10 - 13. It's murder and murder and murder. What's revolting and sickens to the stomach is most of the victims are children and the perpetrators are either set free or at large. Where is our society headed? I know the public in general is outraged at what is happening in our society today. But we will never know the gravity of hurt and anguish when the victims are not from our family and especially when the victims are children.

I was listening to evangelist Ravi Zacharias as he preached the defects of society due to the defects of human nature. That the shape of society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual.

He, RZ, went on to emphasise his point with an illustration of William Golding's novel, 'The Lord Of The Flies'. This is how RZparaphrased 'The Lord Of The Flies' and showed the savagery nature of man as portrayed in this novel.

"A plane load of British school boys is wrecked on a tropical island. Good British subjects as they are, they attempt to organise themselves into an orderly society while awaiting rescue. But dark urges soon gripped the boys as the nearest civilisation melts away and many revert to savagery. First its a game. Then in deadly earnest, one wounds a boar. Suddenly the desire to squeeze and hurt was overmastering. Soon the boys are chanting with ritualistic fervor, kills a pig, cut its throat and bashed it in. A sow is caught and killed in a primitive sacrifice. Its head is cut off and placed on a post. Great black and green flies buzz incessantly around the severed head. The boys giggles as they they rub their bloodied hands on another boys face. The young savages soon turn on a fat, asthmatic, bespectacled lad named Piggy who retained more civility than they cared to have on that island.

'Which is better?' Piggy asks plaintively as they advanced on him. 'To have rules and agree or to hunt and kill?' Moments later, Piggy is knocked off a cliff, his skull cracks open, his arms and legs twitching. Eventually, the pounding waves suck his body into the sea. Piggy's friend Ralph, collapses in a spasm of grief. His filthy body, mattered hair and unwiped nose, Ralf wept for the end of innocence. The darkness of man's heart and the fall through the air of the true wise friend called Piggy.

Later, when the group is rescued, the shocked Naval Officer asked, 'How such savagery could have ever happened? I should have thought that a pack of British boys, you're all British aren't you, would have been able to put up a better show than that, I mean'.

When William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983, the Swedish Academy declared that his novel illuminated the human condition of the world today.

We do not have to go back to the novel TLOTF to know savagery. Its in our newspapers today. And as TLOTF portrays the pessimistic outlook that man is inherently tied to society and without it will likely turn to savagery, tragically these savagery lurks well within the framework of modern society. TLOTF is in our midst.

What do we do? What are the solutions to these barbaric acts? Punitive law? How is it effective when perpetrators are still at large? The moral law? Doesn't seem to have any effect on the heart of man.